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I just realized another reason why working at Google is so fantastic. It's really got a sunny perspective on the planet. I recall when I joined Google London just over a year ago, it was sunny every day coming in to the office. And more: Today, while looking at a Google Earth sight seeing tour playing in our offices, I realized that the entire planet is sunny! :)

I've commented about a few robotics things recently (tennis, cyborgs and more), but I'm buzzing about the potential opened up with the combination of AppInventor, Lego NXT Mindstorm and Android. AppInventor allows me to build a simple application for Android mobile phones by *just* dragging and dropping a few puzzle pieces around to build the logic and UI. The NXT Robot is a bunch of Lego Technic bricks, plus some sensors (e.g. Ultrasound, light, touch) and a few motors (but not just any old motor, effectively stepper motor style thing where you can control the speed and exact rotation angles), and a Lego CPU that can control the lot, and talk to all... including talking to the phone (and AppInventor app) via bluetooth... The possibilities are endless. Well, I've been playing with a few ideas... it can become a mobile controlled curtain open & closer, or the mechanics that can make my space travel for my phone easier by for example deploying the parachute when the phone …

Even though Contoso does not formally appear on my CV, it could just as well, as I've spent sooooo many hours working on Contoso systems. But the big news is that Contoso has gone Google, now running on Google Apps. Welcome Contoso & all the Contoso employees!

Kinect is innovative and created a step change in gaming. But that's gaming. Now, Google have again leapfrogged the competition by making motion the way to control not only gaming, but to improve everyday productivity too, in gmail. And no expensive camera is needed. Similar to the technology used in YouTube Symphony experiment (follow experiment link), the new gmail motion only requires a standard web cam! This blog post, btw, was created with similar technology, with slight movement over the keyboard only.